#participatory democracy

[justalittlesolarpunk]

Just spent all day facilitating a citizens’ assembly and whew, I am exhausted but so inspired. You see ordinary people, who don’t seem radical or political, coming up with ideas for free public transport and a sharing economy, calling for rewilding and housing security for all. The public are so incredible when you just give people a voice and let them know their opinion matters. I really think direct democracy could change the world, but only if it’s given the power and influence to actually inform legislation

#solarpunk #hopepunk #environmentalism #social justice #optimism #community #climate justice #citizens’ assembly #people’s assembly #direct democracy #participatory democracy #radical organising

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The category of race was also critical to the second pillar of the CFU’s [Canadian Farmworkers Union] organizing mission: ridding the industry of contractors. Contractors would supply the labour force for the farmers and, in many cases, they held as much power as the farmers. The contractor was responsible for hiring a workforce, maintaining discipline, and making payments. The farmer would not pay the workers directly; instead, the farmer would pay the contractor who, in many cases, would retain the money until the end of the season. In many instances, the contractor was also responsible for transporting workers between the field and their homes. Since labour contractors were trying to maximize profits, the vehicles they used to transport workers predictably violated many road safety standards. As Chouhan remembers, his first contractor: “came to pick me up in an Econoline van which had no seats in it, there were people sitting on the floor which was quite a shock [laughs]. No seat belts, no nothing.” Many workers have been killed due to accidents in these unsafe vehicles, and, as recently as 7 March 2007, three farmworkers died in a rollover accident while riding in an overcrowded vehicle between Abbotsford and Chilliwack. Often, contractors were from the same social and ethnic circles as the labourers whom they employed. Charan Gill identified a “colonial mentality” in comments made by farmworkers. Since the contractors who provided them with work shared familial and cultural ties with them, some of which could be traced back to Punjab, many farmworkers did not want to stand up to the contractors. Fears of losing jobs and housing were very real, and such losses could jeopardize their immigration status. Contractors who came from the same community as the workers could manipulate the latter into believing they were on their side, and, because of this, Gill notes: “in spite of our efforts, individual interests [of workers] sometimes invalidated collective interests [of their class]” because some of those workers aspired to be contractors. Simply getting safety information to farmworkers was also difficult. Since many of the workers could not read or write in English, and some were illiterate in their own languages, they were often dependent on information from the farmer and the contractor. Contractors could intentionally mislead, omit certain information, or outright lie to their workers about their legal rights. This delayed organizing efforts. To counter this information block, organizers would try to go to local temples on the weekends, where many workers went to pray. However, the labour contractors also had control over the temple executives, so organizers were often refused the right to speak. Frustrated, the organizers developed a two-part strategy. First, they would have “kitchen meetings” in which the organizer would contact one worker for a meeting in their home, and that worker would contact neighbours and friends, so “that way [they would] not [be] afraid to be seen by a labour contractor or in the temple or in a public place.” Second, because many families used the temples for social events, the organizers would ask family members to invite the CFU and thus circumvent the temple executives as organizers of social events had the “absolute right to invite anyone they want[ed].”

These strategies helped the CFU reach out to potential members and to provide valuable information regarding their legal rights. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of the CFU, contractors are still a part of the industry to this day, and anyone driving through the agricultural areas of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland can witness the painted-over shuttle buses that daily transport farmworkers from home to field."

- Nicholas Fast, ““WE WERE A SOCIAL MOVEMENT AS WELL”: The Canadian Farmworkers Union in British Columbia, 1979–1983,” BC Studies. no. 217, Spring 2023. p. 44-45.

#canadian farmworkers union #participatory democracy #union organizing #farm workers #agricultural workers #indian immigration to canada #immigrant workers #racialized workers #farming in canada #working class struggle #academic quote #strike #union politics #labour contracting #exploitation #reading 2024

[katchwreck]

We vote 'For!' (the collective farm)

1920s, USSR.

#1920s #soviet union #historical photos #democracy #peasants #Farm #collectivization #socialism #marxism leninism #ussr #marxism #participatory

[girderednerve]

upset about things at work that aren't really in my control again, rip

#the context is lengthy so i will not be providing it :) #irredeemable whining #we love participatory democracy here at girderednerve.tumblr.com #a union absolutely would not fix this problem but it might fix other problems. or cause different ones! #at this rate i would settle for different problems tbh

[deathshallbenomore]

#I’m just curious lol I can’t make up my mind so I’ll leave it to participatory democracy #succession

[silveredsound]

We did it. We did it, Albo.

#im so fucking happy and relieved #and! #so so so into the way participatory democracy and our preferential system got to actually do its damn thing this election #like i loveee our voting system #and just made my mum and sister take part in a noncon third year uni tute about why #anyway #my tiny flicker of hope was right to exist and now the hard work starts

[amereid1960]

الأنواع الديمقراطية بين التكامل والتنازع - الديمقراطية التمثيلية والديمقراطية التشاركية نموذجاً

الأنواع الديمقراطية بين التكامل والتنازع – الديمقراطية التمثيلية والديمقراطية التشاركية نموذجاً   الأنواع الديمقراطية بين التكامل والتنازع – الديمقراطية التمثيلية والديمقراطية التشاركية نموذجاً الكاتب : العباسي بوعلام ملخص: ظهر على مفهوم الديمقراطية التقليدية الكثير من مواطن الضعف والقصور، بحيث بات الشك يحوم حول نوايا المنتخبين المحليين، مما جعلهم محل اتهام بالتقصير في أداء مهامهم، وانصرافهم إلى…

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#الديمقراطية التمثيلية – الديمقراطية التشاركية – المجتمع المدني. Representative Democracy – Participatory Democracy – Civil Society.

[alewaanewspaper1960]

الأنواع الديمقراطية بين التكامل والتنازع - الديمقراطية التمثيلية والديمقراطية التشاركية نموذجاً

الأنواع الديمقراطية بين التكامل والتنازع – الديمقراطية التمثيلية والديمقراطية التشاركية نموذجاً   الأنواع الديمقراطية بين التكامل والتنازع – الديمقراطية التمثيلية والديمقراطية التشاركية نموذجاً الكاتب : العباسي بوعلام ملخص: ظهر على مفهوم الديمقراطية التقليدية الكثير من مواطن الضعف والقصور، بحيث بات الشك يحوم حول نوايا المنتخبين المحليين، مما جعلهم محل اتهام بالتقصير في أداء مهامهم، وانصرافهم إلى…

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#الديمقراطية التمثيلية – الديمقراطية التشاركية – المجتمع المدني. Representative Democracy – Participatory Democracy – Civil Society.

[democracyspot]

Voices in the Code: Citizen Participation for Better Algorithms

Voices in the Code: Citizen Participation for Better Algorithms

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay Voices in the Code, by David G. Robinson, is finally out. I had the opportunity to read the book prior to its publication, and I could not recommend it enough. David shows how, between 2004 and 2014 in the US, experts and citizens came together to build a new kidney transplant matching algorithm. David’s work is a breath of fresh air for the debate…

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#algorithmic accountability #artificial intelligence #civic technology #David G. Robinson #deliberative democracy #health #participatory governance mechanisms #technology

[once-in-a-blue-moon2021]

The End of Dialogue

The End of Dialogue

India is in a situation where dialogue is silenced by the autocratic governmentality. In this video collage, three consecutive situations are projected to show that all the three different political parties are acting in the same way– halting the dialogue. Thus, this collage proposes a decentralized, self-reliant partyless society where logical dialogue without manipulation might be…

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#Heading_towards_Partyless_Society #Power_Continues #Towards-a_Partyless_Society #Partyless participatory democracy #Partyless Society #Vimeo

[txttletale]

hi I've been following you for a while and I had some questions about MLism. First, while I think I have a decent understanding of how it works economically, how would a ML government (after the revolution) ensure it doesn't become too powerful? like what systems would be put in place so that it hears public opinion and dissent (should there be any) and not try to maintain power through oppressive means?

Secondly, what would the aftermath of the revolution look like? once the government is overthrown, there will most likely be a period of instability where different factions trying to sieze control. How would the MLs make sure that they get seated in power?

I am genuinely trying to learn more about it, so I'm sorry if those questions are ignorant. Thanks!

i mean, that first part? i'll be completely honest with you and say that in my opinion that's a partially unsolved problem. i think that lenin's prescriptions in state & revolution, based on the actions of the paris commune--that all 'officials' should be subject to democratic recall at any time and paid no more than anyone else--would be a good start.

but of course the USSR did not ossify and see abuses of power because its leaders simply forgot about what lenin wrote--the centralization of power and limiting of worker democracy was a direct result of the newly formed state apparatus having to fight brutal years-long civil war followed as mere decade later by a brutal years-long international invasion. & this is of course a situation that will be faced by any serious socialist government & their newly formed apparatus!

however, on the other hand -- cuba has succesfully maintained an incredible system of participatory democracy. i think that mao's idea of the 'mass line' -- that theory must constantly be in dialogue with the situation on the ground and the situation of the workers -- is vital to maintaining this. in its own time of crisis, during the 90s, instead of 'pulling the ladder up' on workers' councils, cuba expanded and doubled down on its participatory democracy. i think if any nation has succesfully followed lenin's theory and example, it's cuba, and the mass workplace and municipal democracy that the cuban communist party has invited should be the model for any future socialist revolution.

and quite frankly the reason why MLs will 'take power' after the revolution is because marxism-leninism is the only revolutionary socialist ideology with a plan and ability to take and maintain power over the bourgeoisie. i think one thing reading lenin will very much clarify is that the socialist state is not something that is built after the revolution but a continuation of the revolution -- lenin explains aptly the marxist position that, having taken up arms in order to dethrone the bourgeoisie, to not establish a marxist dictatorship of the proletariat is to throw aside those arms that have already been wielded and used. 'not setting up a worker's state' isn't inaction, but a deliberate choice to be disarmed and helpless in the face of foreign intervention or counterrevolution.

and this is also why i think that while solving the (very real and dangerous!) spectres of bureaucracy, of revisionism, of socialist militias becoming police forces "special bodies of men apart from and above" the people instead of "self-acting armed organizations" of the people is a vital and pressing question for marxism-leninism to address in both theory and practice, it is just as vital to note that only marxism-leninism can succeed to the point where this becomes a problem--only marxism-leninism has shown the historical ability to put the workers in a position of political supremacy that they might risk losing to these flaws and missteps.

& seriously, don't be sorry for asking questions. any questions in good faith are welcomed on this blog, because i'm a communist and i do in fact think it is my job to explain communism to people. have a nice day & don't be so down on yourself!

#ask #Anonymous

[zvaigzdelasas]

In America these days, almost any information about North Korea, be it rumor, fake news, or just plain silly, becomes fodder for the mainstream media. [...]

But when it comes to South Korea, which hosts 28,500 American ground troops and the Pentagon’s largest military base outside of North America, U.S. media coverage is, shall we say, highly selective. That was made resoundingly clear on August 14, when Seoul was the scene for the largest public demonstration in decades against the U.S. military presence in South Korea.

Amazingly, not a word about the protest appeared in the U.S. media.

That Saturday, thousands of people chanting “this land is not a U.S. war base” demonstrated against Ulchi Freedom Shield, the first large-scale military exercises between U.S. and South Korean forces since 2017. The protests were organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), South Korea’s second-largest labor federation. They were joined by a range of progressive allies, including People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), an influential citizen’s group founded in 1994.

“At a time when military tensions on the Korean Peninsula are escalating and there is no clue for inter-Korean dialogue, we are concerned that an aggressive large-scale military exercise will exacerbate the situation,” PSPD declared. “We once again urge the US and ROK governments to suspend the ROK-US joint military exercise and make efforts to create conditions for dialogue.” At the demonstration, protesters took direct aim at the heart of U.S. policy in Korea, with signs that read “No war rehearsal, No U.S.” and “No Korea-U.S.-Japan military cooperation.”

Outside of the Korean press, the only outlets to cover this massive showing against militarism were Iran’s Press TV and China’s CGTN, which provided extensive video of the mobilization. The single print story on the march appeared in Xinhua, China’s daily wire service. Neither the New York Times or the Washington Post, which often set the pace for U.S. press coverage of Asia, deemed the demonstration newsworthy.

23 Aug 22

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"In many ways, the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) and its predecessor, the Farmworkers Organizing Committee (FWOC), operated like a trade union. The CFU executive chose three related areas on which to focus its organizing efforts: (1) improving working and living conditions, (2) eliminating the contractor system that further exploited already vulnerable workers, and (3) fighting to include farmworkers in the BC labour code, affording farmworkers rights to minimum wage and health benefits.

Working and living conditions constituted one of the main pillars that organizers rallied around to push their efforts. One story was often used in CFU documents as a rallying cry:

On July 16, 1980, little Sukhdeep Madhar lay sleeping in a cow stall converted into sleeping quarters when, unknown to her parents working in the fields close by, she rolled off her cot. The seven month-old baby drowned in a bucket of drinking water before being discovered. Ruling the tragedy as an accidental death, Dr. Bill Macarthur, Coroner, said that working conditions on the farm were like those found in Nazi concentration camps.

Further, while out in the field, workers found that many farms did not have running water or washroom facilities. Other farms did not have places for children who had to attend work with their parents (or for workers on breaks) to sit in the shade on hot days. In addition to unsafe working conditions in the field, workers who did not have enough money for housing would have to live in converted barn stalls on the farm where they worked. These stalls would often have simple hay and straw as flooring with small cots for sleeping. Some living quarters did not have running water, heating, or washroom facilities. Finally, it was not uncommon for farm owners and operators, or even for the contractors who acted as intermediaries, to withhold wages from workers until the end of the season (should they be paid at all).

Despite its small size, the CFU was relatively successful in improving working conditions, especially with regard to securing stolen wages. The first test for the FWOC was a dispute between Mukhiter Singh and the contractor that he had hired to provide a labour force. On 17 July 1979, workers contacted the FWOC to help set up a picket line after they discovered that Mukhiter was withholding $100,000 owed for six weeks of labour because he was unsatisfied with the pickers’ work. The FWOC immediately sent out “several dozen Committee members” and “joined two hundred workers on the picket lines.” After a tense standoff, Mukhiter offered to pay $40,000 in wages, but the farmworkers refused the offer. After roughly two hours of negotiations with Chouhan, Mukhiter paid the workers $80,000 and the dispute was settled. This incident was the first major victory for the FWOC.

The following year, a larger battle took place with a much larger grower: Jensen Mushroom Farms in Langley. On 18 July 1980, despite the grower’s assertion that “if they don’t like it [working conditions], they can quit,” Jensen Mushroom Farms became the first agricultural work site to be certified by the Labour Relations Board (LRB). While this did not mean the workers had a contract, the LRB ruling did mean that the union could negotiate on behalf of the workers. This was the first ruling of its kind in BC labour history. The first signed contract would come from a different farm, Bell Farms. The owner, Jack Bell, was relatively sympathetic to unions and did not offer any resistance to workers who organized for union representation. That LRB certification would come on 3 September 1980, and the first contract would be ratified on 18 November. While getting a certification was the first step, the process to signing a contract could be extremely drawn out. After nine months of negotiations at Jensen Farms with little progress, the CFU voted to strike on 14 April 1981. Here, Jensen demonstrated his resolve to prevent a union from entering his workplace. On the first day of picketing, an altercation between Chouhan and some of Jensen’s family members left Chouhan with a cut on his forehead, and each side pointed to the other as the instigator. A CFU organizer at the picket line, Sandi Roy, describes in a police report how Annie Hall, Jensen’s daughter, struck Chouhan in the head with keys, “causing him to bleed profusely.” Immediately after the altercation, Murray Munroe, Jensen’s son-in-law, “and at least three of the passengers of both trucks [that had transported Jensen’s family to the picket line] exited from the trucks and began running towards Mr. Chouhan and pushed him into a roadside ditch.” No legal action was taken by either party.

As the strike wore on, the CFU described “various forms of violence from name calling, to car pounding, to a physical scuffle, to telephone wires being cut, to trucks being chased at high speeds, to an attempt to burn down a trailer while a picketer was sleeping inside.” Despite ten workers scabbing (union strikebreaking) and extreme tension on the picket line, the line held strong until September 1981, when it was finally lifted. Formal contract negotiations would not recommence until May 1982, and on 30 July 1982, more than a year after the certification, a formal contract was signed. Getting a contract after a long strike was one matter, but managing to maintain certification with a stubborn owner was also a difficult task. According to the CFU, the fourteen remaining workers who returned to work at Jensen’s were evenly split on the issue of the union. In June 1983, ten months after the strike’s conclusion, the number of people who worked at Jensen’s had increased to forty seven, and the turnover rate was high. This meant that many of those who supported the union had left and that those who remained were now outnumbered in the workplace. Jensen also began to hire his immediate family members as employees to reduce the strength of the union. The family members intimidated workers who were worried about being identified to the employer as pro-union. When shop stewards were elected, Jean Hall – whose relation to the aforementioned Annie Hall is unclear – was elected for labourers and Rajinder Gill was elected for pickers. The CFU claimed that “the election of Jean Hall was orchestrated by Tove Nesbitt and Jens Jensen (Jensen’s daughter and brother).”

Clearly, Jensen was determined to break the union by inserting his family members into the union’s structure. Union meetings became difficult places to be and were reported by workers to be dominated by Jensen’s family members. According to the CFU, “at one time Jensen had nine family members working at the farm and on average there were seven.” Workers felt intimidated at meetings because they feared that their concerns would be passed back to Jensen and that they could be disciplined or fired. On 1 April 1983, Jensen’s employees applied to the LRB for decertification, and, despite the CFU’s confidence that the decertification vote would fail, on 8 July it passed by a count of 23 to 22. The CFU, understandably disheartened, put some blame on recent immigrants, who were “in awe of ‘authority’ figures” and did not want to appear pro-union to new employers.

During an investigation of Jensen Farms by the provincial government’s Ministry of Labour, R.F. Bone noted some troubling practices on the part of the employer. First, at the time of the strike, it was estimated that 90 percent of the workforce was South Asian and that most supported the union. During the strike, many of these workers left for other jobs because they needed to support themselves. After the strike, Bone noted: “all employees hired (approx. 17) have been non-East Indian, except for four young ladies, all related to the only two East Indians (Gurmit Kaur and Sukhbir Kaur) employed before the strike who then and still are strongly anti-union.” These hires were Euro-Canadians and Laotians. Since the mushroom farm had different greenhouses, Jensen had the Laotians working in areas away from the pro-union employees and had scheduled the pro-union employees to work during union meetings. This tactic allowed the anti-union workers who still attended meetings to elect Jean Hall and Gurmit Kaur, workers who scabbed during the strike, to be delegates for the CFU National Convention in April 1984. Both delegates were expelled from the convention after this revelation and were deemed members “not in good standing.” Finally, Jensen attempted to have the CFU barred from any certifications for one calendar year – an attempt that was denied by the LRB.

This battle had an underlying racist tone. As demonstrated by Jensen’s practices after the strike, Jensen was actively avoiding South Asians. Other anti-union employees also hinted at an ethnic divide. Fred Forman, a white worker hired after the strike, suggested: “if I had a grievance, I don’t think it would work because I’m the wrong colour.” Farmers, including Jensen, used the idea that the CFU was an exclusively South Asian union to discourage membership among newly hired Laotians and whites as well as to discredit the union among its current members."

- Nicholas Fast, ““WE WERE A SOCIAL MOVEMENT AS WELL”: The Canadian Farmworkers Union in British Columbia, 1979–1983,” BC Studies. no. 217, Spring 2023. p. 41-44.

#canadian farmworkers union #participatory democracy #union organizing #farm workers #agricultural workers #indian immigration to canada #immigrant workers #racialized workers #farming in canada #working class struggle #academic quote #strike #union politics #scabs #strikebreaking #reading 2024

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

I try to not get bogged down in analyzing the superstructural elements of fascism since they vary wildly and distract from fascism's true political-economic function (to smother revolution and growing class consciousness in the cradle by enforcing detente between the working and owning classes in the name of national interests) but all existing fascist movement have made use of what might be called a "usable history" and "usable culture", usually rife with contradictions that fall apart under the smallest bit of scrutiny. Fascists play with and incorporate any bit of art, media, theory, culture, or history that supports their power even when those things are in absolute contradiction with each other. The Nazis made use of both the Church and Germanic neopaganism in their attempts to produce a fascist culture. Post-Soviet ultranationalists appeal to both the Soviet legacy, especially during WW2, as well as pre-revolutionary monarchism and imperialism. The Zionist state presents itself as both an "indigenous sovereignty/self-determination" movement and a colony of "Western" "democracy" and enlightenment amidst a sea of Islamic and Arab savagery. Contemporary US fascists incorporate references to art and culture produced by the very "degenerates" they seek to annihilate (e.g. redpills). This is reflected in their political beliefs as well, promising to destroy "finance capital"/"monopoly capitalism"/"usury"/etc. while actually serving their interests. In all cases the point is to produce a false mass culture for a state that gives the illusion of being a participatory mass society while enforcing hierarchy and the dictatorship of capital with an iron fist.

[azspot]

It isn’t hard to see why the prospect of liberal socialism would be appealing today. Liberalism remains in or near crisis, and vast numbers express discontent with the neoliberal status quo. At the same time, there are very good reasons to reject revisiting forms of authoritarian ‘real existing socialism’ and communism. Liberal socialism offers the prospect of combining respect for liberal rights, checks and balances on state power, and participatory democracy with socialist concerns for the equal flourishing of all in a sustainable environment, the extension of democratic concerns into the workplace and ‘private government’, and pushing back on plutocratic rule. It also philosophically aligns well with concrete democratic socialist and radical movements appearing in the US, Chile, Brazil and elsewhere that want radical economic change but align with liberal values. Whether liberal socialism can transition from being a theoretical tradition and become a popular political ideology is a hard question. But, in a world defined by growing anger at inequality and plutocracy, liberal socialism is worthy of our loyalty.

The case for liberal socialism in the 21st century

#liberals #socialism

[warsofasoiaf]

Thank you for all your extensive replies about politics, they’re fascinating. Do you think Putin’s framing of the Russo-Ukrainian war as ‘anti-Fascist’ (de-Nazification etc) is a deliberate callback to Soviet propaganda where all opposition was termed Fascist? Such keywords must appeal to the old Soviet generation, but most soldiers nowadays would’ve been born post-1989. Is ‘anti-Fascism’ still a powerful motivator in modern Russia to your knowledge?

100%.

Even though the Soviet Union might be gone, the "Great Patriotic War" as Russia calls the Second World War still looms very large in Russian cultural history. Many Russians see the Great Patriotic War as a wholly Russian endeavor, that the back of the Nazi war machine was broken by the stalwart Russian soldier. This ignores that the Soviet Union had plenty of non-Russians in the Red Army, to include Ukrainians, whose contributions are minimized by Russian revisionist history, as well as Soviet revisionism which glossed over the alliance that the Soviet Union had with Nazi Germany from 1939-1941, which included a joint invasion of Poland (hence why the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact should be considered more than a mere non-aggression pact). It also neglects that the bulk of Soviet casualties, particularly in 1941, were not due to Soviet sacrifice but Soviet incompetence. Stalin didn't prepare for an invasion and ignored intelligence both from his own domestic military intelligence and the West. While I understand and appreciate the need for a soldier to sell his life dearly if indeed it must be spent, the early Nazi incursions into the Soviet Union were defined not by heroic self-sacrifice but by abject stupidity.

Soviet, and later Russian, narratives of the Great Patriotic War portray Nazism as a distinctly anti-Soviet and anti-Russian movement. In many cases, the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime is downplayed; the victims of the Holocaust were primarily considered to be Soviets, not Jewish. Part of this is because Stalin embarked upon his own anti-Semitic pogroms, and part of it was due to the differing conception of Nazism between Soviets and the West. When the West thinks of Nazism, they primarily conceive of it in terms of the Holocaust because of how utterly abhorrent it was. When a Western observer thinks of a Nazi, their immediate response is: "Who are they murdering? How many? What methods are they using?" This really couldn't be done in the Soviet Union, because the Soviets also had an institutional policy of extermination - not only the Great Purge by Stalin, but dating all the way back to Lenin's categorical exterminations. So Nazism was conceived as anti-Russian to square the circle, and everything from Soviet covert support of Nazi rearmament to allowing Japan to resupply Nazi Germany via the Trans-Siberian railway to the joint invasion of Poland was just ignored.

This continued into the Cold War, where the Soviet conception of Nazism as anti-Russian was able to be easily transferred to the West and NATO. Soviet conceptions of fascism exemplified that fascism was capitalism with the veneer of participatory democracy stripped away, thus the West were simply Nazis who pretended harder. It served a very useful purpose in keeping the Soviet public mobilized against the West, who were predicted to invade soon after the end of the Second World War (the West also believed the Soviets would invade Western Europe while it was still rebuilding, hence the formation of the Western Union and NATO following the installation of puppet regimes in Eastern Europe).

So in the modern day, Russia tries to harp that the Ukrainians are a far-right, nationalist, and Nazi regime devoted to exterminate Russians to sell their war to the populace. They try to latch on Ukrainian far-right movements that gained prominence after the Russian annexation of Crimea in one of the best modern examples of the chutzpah defense, despite the diminishment of the far-right in Ukrainian politics in the intervening years. This isn't surprising, it's right out of Hermann Goering's playbook to denounce the opposition as unpatriotic. For all their pronouncements of wanting to destroy Nazism, Russia is one of the best examples of a fascist state that we have, in the sense of a state striving against the decadence of liberalism that was the hallmark of early Nazi propaganda (whereas China is the best example of a large power ethnostate).

The Russian cultural zeitgeist today still believes that the West largely dismisses Soviet contributions to World War II, and this is before you get to the very real and quite prominent phenomenon of Russians who wish for a Nazi-Soviet pact that endured and destroyed the West, with a special emphasis on Great Britain. In the 1950's, this had a kernel of truth, the West largely dismissed Soviet sacrifices. In the modern day though, this is largely inaccurate - military scholarship largely acknowledges Soviet contributions. However, it acknowledges Lend-Lease aid, which does little to stroke Russian egos, so in this sense, we actually have a reversal of the old 1950's US textbooks. That era definitely did minimize Soviet contributions, but these days the primary source of historical disinformation is from pro-Russian and pro-Soviet sources which reduce the Second World War almost entirely to Soviet contributions, often forgetting about the Pacific Theater save in the invasion of Manchura. This is supported by tankies and campists in the West who conceive of the Second World War as a means by which to glorify their own tribe. Coming from a warts-and-all historical enthusiast like myself, I find it disgusting.

So yeah, the Soviet Union may be gone, but the damage it created endures.

Thanks for the question, Vincint.

#modern politics #russia #russo ukrainian war #fascism